OpenCode vs Cline

Cline suits developers who want to approve every step from inside their editor; OpenCode suits those who live in the terminal and would rather set permissions once and let the agent run.

By Sheela · Checked Oct 26, 2026 · How we review

OpenCode

4.6/5

Choose OpenCode if you work mainly in a terminal, want the same agents and MCP setup across many model providers, or need Enterprise config that forces every install through your own LLM gateway.

Read our OpenCode review

Cline

4.4/5

Choose Cline if you work in VS Code or JetBrains, want each diff and command shown for approval with checkpoints to roll back, and plan to run it headless in CI as well.

Read our Cline review

OpenCode vs Cline, side by side
Feature	OpenCode	Cline
Our rating	4.6/5	4.4/5
Price	Free and open source (MIT); you pay your model provider. Optional OpenCode Go costs $10 or $40 a month; Zen is pay-as-you-go from $20 top-ups; Enterprise is per seat, price on request.	Free and open source (Apache 2.0); you pay model providers or Cline at cost. ClinePass for open-weight models $9.99/month. Enterprise custom.
Best for	Developers who want a vendor-neutral terminal coding agent.	VS Code users who want an open-source agent and control over which model they pay for.
Home surface	Terminal first; desktop app, IDE extensions and web	VS Code first; JetBrains, CLI, desktop app and Node SDK
Default approvals	Edits and shell commands allowed; asks for paths outside the project and .env files	Every file edit and terminal command waits for approval unless auto-approve is on
Licence	MIT, about 221,800 GitHub stars	Apache 2.0, about 70,900 stars; JetBrains plugin not open source
Optional model plan	OpenCode Go, $10 or $40 a month, 29 models with published caps	ClinePass, $9.99 a month, 14 open-weight models, quotas not published
Telemetry and data	Says it stores no code or context, except on its free models	Telemetry on by default; includes prompts only on Cline and ClinePass requests
2026 advisories	Three, all in its local HTTP server and web UI, one critical	Three: a compromised npm publish and two WebSocket hijacks, one critical
Enterprise	Per seat; no token charge through your own gateway	Custom quote; SSO, RBAC and audit logs, no SOC 2 cited

Both are open-source, bring-your-own-model coding agents with three security advisories each in 2026. Cline started in VS Code and asks before every edit and command by default; OpenCode started in the terminal and allows edits and shell commands by default. Each sells an optional model subscription at about $10 a month.

OpenCode and Cline sell the same promise, an open-source agent that works with whichever model you pay for, but they start from opposite ends of the approval question. Cline's README says you approve each file edit and terminal command by default, with every edit shown as a diff and saved as a checkpoint in VS Code and JetBrains. OpenCode's permissions docs say most tools, edit and bash included, default to allow, asking only for paths outside the project, repeated identical tool calls and .env files. Its read-only plan agent blocks edits but, per the agents docs, does not restrict shell commands unless configured.

Both have grown well past their first surface. OpenCode runs as a terminal UI, a desktop app, IDE extensions and on the web, and reaches more than 75 providers through Models.dev. Cline ships a VS Code extension, a JetBrains plugin whose source is not public, a CLI that runs headless in CI (git diff piped into a review prompt is the README's own example), a desktop app and a Node SDK. Both release constantly: OpenCode v1.19.4 came out on 22 October 2026, and Cline's extension v4.1.26 and CLI 3.0.74 on 26 October. OpenCode has about 221,800 GitHub stars to Cline's 70,900.

The security records are similar in size and different in kind. OpenCode's three 2026 advisories all concern its local HTTP server and web UI, where a malicious website could run commands or trigger a package install. Cline's three were a compromised npm publish of cline@2.3.0 and cross-origin WebSocket hijacks in its Kanban server (critical) and Hub dashboard. On data, Cline's telemetry is on by default in every client and, for requests through the Cline and ClinePass providers, can include prompts and replies; OpenCode says it stores no code or context except when you use its free models.

The optional subscriptions show the gap in transparency. OpenCode Go costs $10 or $40 a month for 29 models and publishes its caps (20% of the monthly allowance per five hours, 50% per week) along with per-model retention, noting that two models train on prompts. ClinePass costs $9.99 a month for 14 open-weight models from six labs and describes its quotas only as two to five times standard API rate limits. For a buyer, OpenCode Enterprise's promise of no token charge through your own gateway is easier to price than Cline's custom quote, while for a developer who wants to see every change before it lands, Cline's defaults need no configuration at all.

Which should you choose?

The jobs each one is best at, from our reviews.

Pick OpenCode if you are…

A platform team at a 500-developer bank with an internal LLM gateway
Give engineers a coding agent that only ever talks to approved models
Enterprise central config points every install at the internal gateway via SSO and disables other providers, with share pages turned off. Billing is per seat with no token charge from Anomaly; the bank pays its own model costs.
A freelance developer paying for tokens personally
Run a capable terminal agent for under the price of a Claude or ChatGPT subscription
Install with Homebrew or npm and subscribe to OpenCode Go at $10 a month, which caps use at 20% of the monthly allowance per five hours. Switching to a frontier model for a hard task means adding that provider's own key.
A staff engineer evaluating models for a 30-person product team
Compare how different models handle the same refactor
Keep one set of agents, commands and MCP servers and change only the model per session, so differences come from the model rather than the harness. Cost is whatever each provider charges for the tokens used.

Pick Cline if you are…

A backend developer at a firm that forbids sending code to US cloud APIs
Use an agent with a local model only
Point Cline at Ollama or LM Studio and turn telemetry off under Settings > General. Every command still needs approval, which keeps a weaker local model from running away; the cost is the workstation GPU, and quality depends heavily on the model.
A platform team maintaining a monorepo
Add an automated first-pass review to every pull request
Pipe the diff into the headless CLI in CI and parse `--json` output for comments. No seat fees; each run costs the model tokens for the diff plus context, which is worth capping per job.
An engineering director standardising one agent across several teams
Give developers an agent while keeping control of models and spend
Cline Enterprise adds SSO, role-based access, provider allow-lists, centralised billing and audit logs on a custom quote. The admin telemetry setting reaches only the VS Code and JetBrains clients, and no SOC 2 report is cited on the pricing page, so security review needs a direct request.